How to use Process.Start() or equivalent with Mono on a Mac and pass in arguments

Question

I am trying to write some c# code to start a browser using Process.Start(app,args); where apps is the path to the browser e.g. /Applications/Google Chrome

Answer 1

To make Process.Start use exec directly instead of using the OS' mechanism for opening files, you must set UseShellExecute to false. This is also true on Linux and Windows.

Process.Start(new ProcessStartInfo (
    "/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome",
    "--no-first-run")
    { UseShellExecute = false });

Note that you can also use 'open' for your use case, to run the Chrome app bundle properly. Use the '-a' argument to force it to run a specific app, the '-n' argument to open a new instance, and '--args' to pass in arguments:

Process.Start(new ProcessStartInfo (
    "open",
    "-a '/Applications/Google Chrome.app' -n --args --no-first-run")
    { UseShellExecute = false });

Answer 2

Why dont you try something like this:

Process P = new Process();                        
P.StartInfo.FileName = "/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome";
P.StartInfo.Arguments = "--no-default-browser-check";
P.UseShellExecute = false;            
P.Start();

Answer 3

Have you tried something like concatenating the parameters into the process name instead of passing it separated?

var processName = "/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome";
var args = "--no-default-browser-check";
Process.Start(String.Format("{0} {1}", processName, args));

Answer 4

Looks like Process uses the open command line utility to launch.

You should avoid calling the executable directly. If the application is already running, this would launch a second instance of it instead of activating the already running instance. That's probably not what you want, and not all applications can handle this anyway.

With open, the syntax to launch Chrome would be

open -a Chrome

I don't know how the Process class works on MacOS X, but I assume that the parameters should be similar.

Note, if you just want to open a web page, you should not specify the executable; instead, just pass the URL, so that it will be opened in the user's default browser. This is valid for any platform.

Process.Start("http://www.google.com");